Yesterday saw Parliament's full vote on the Registration, Evaluation, and Authorisation of Chemicals (REACH) legislation, which aims to introduce a coherent testing regime to ensure that the chemicals used in everyday products are safe.

I am strongly in favour of the REACH legislation being brought into effect in its most effective form possible, along with my Labour colleagues and the rest of the Socialist group in which we sit in the European Parliament.

However, in the European Parliament, no political group has an absolute majority and the European People's Party (including the UK Tories) is the largest group. These political realities have made it difficult to build a majority in support of as strong a piece of legislation as I would have liked.

So I voted in favour of two compromises. One, negotiated between the Socialists and the Greens and Liberals, covered scope, substances, authorisation information, transparency and limitation of animal testing. The other, negotiated with the centre-right, covered which chemicals would have to be registered. These compromises are not ideal, but they are the best deal currently possible, given the political majorities in the Parliament.

We do need to test chemicals. Recent medical evidence shows that each one of us has 300 more chemicals in our bodily tissues and blood than our grandparents did. We also know that there are increasing rates of asthma, cancer and other diseases which probably originate from chemicals.

Some in the chemical industry argue that such testing is costly. But anyone who recalls the asbestos tragedy will know that money invested in the testing now can save thousands of lives and millions of pounds downstream. With the burden shared with our fellow countries in the European Union, this is well worth doing.

Along with the rest of the Socialist Group, I also supported all the amendments that were recommended to us by animal welfare organisations who sought to reduce the testing of chemicals on animals as a result of the new legislation.

I believe that the final compromise was the best possible outcome that could have been achieved, given the political make-up of the Parliament. The draft legislation will now pass to the Council, where the Ministers of the 25 Member States will examine the text adopted by the Parliament. If they agree our text, it will become law. If they decide it requires further amendment, the text will come before the Parliament for a second reading. I will do all I can to ensure that the compromise is not weakened in any further readings.